There has been a push of late to discourage people from buying bottled water, as it creates waste and is expensive. Menino, with a bunch of other mayors, has decided to stop stocking bottled water at City Hall (where I used to work, and where I admittedly consumed my share of bottled water at taxpayers’ expense). Which is fine- now employees and visitors will just have to bring their own bottled water or drink from the City Hall “tap water” bubblers if they want a drink. Dot Joyce, in an archived Herald article described Boston’s tap water as “second to none.” According to Yvonne Abraham, Menino himself wouldn’t be caught dead with a hoity-toity Dasani- “Boston Ale” is his beverage of choice. So, do you people agree? Do you trust the tap water? We got this somewhat cryptic letter from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, along with our annual report from the MWRA. The letter doesn’t really say that Boston water passed the lead test for the whole year- the most it appears to claim is that Boston made it under the 15 ppb limit for “two cosecutive sampling rounds”, and that the lead levels were within an acceptable range for a five month period. I guess it really depends on the piping within a particular building- I can definitely say that sometimes the tap water in my apartment tastes pretty darn funny. I’m curious to know what others think: is an unqualified endorsement of Boston’s tap water justified? Have we all been snookered by Aquafina and Poland Spring? What do you drink- tap or bottled?
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p>Mostly filtered tap water (we have an in-sink Multi-Pure model).
It hasn’t killed me yet.
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p>I will say that while the Boston water has a whole is, in my opinion, top notch, if you live in some old-ass buildings with crap plumbing, the funny taste or sub-par water could be from the building in which you live rather than from Boston’s supply. My last apartment’s water supply clogged on-faucet Brita filters in about a month (Brita filters aren’t supposed to clog and should need to be changed for about 3 months). I don’t know if you can get your water tested or if there is a kit you can get at home depot.
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p>Taste can be improved with a home filter system. My understanding is that filters don’t necessarily make the water “safer”, but they can remove odor and taster making it more pleasant to drink. It is also my understanding that running water is often safer because still bottled water is an environment more friendly to bacteria and what-not growing, whereas the movement of constant running water allows for fewer contaminations. At the very least, I’d say the average tap water is just as safe as bottled.
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p>yes
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p>yes. My advice: go to a local hardware store, but if that’s no good, go to the Despot or Lowe’s and head straight to the aisle with the long lengths of pipe, and find the employee with dirty hands. He’ll know where the kit is; often it’s hidden away somewhere.
it has stuff in it your body needs, whereas filtered water filters it out.
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p>But Poland Springs! Deers drink from that place and everything! It MUST be better for you.
But I always thought Boston water had a fishy taste, and contain a fair amount of rust or sediment (look inside the toilet tank). It was OK with liberal use of the Brita filter.
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p>On the other hand, I always found NYC water to deserve its tasty reputation, right from the tap.
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p>…and conservatives like it too.
and I’ve never had rust or sediment in the toilet tank. I suspect it was curb-to-home pipes that created that problem.
I live in Boston and drink the tap water. As I read the MWRA material you cite, you’re right to think that the lead problem is a problem with particular service lines, and not a problem in the reservoir or the aquaduct. Frankly, I think if you live in a typical house or apartment in Boston, it’s much more likely that you’ll be exposed to lead from paint dust on the surfaces in your home than that your water is contaminated.
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p>Also, the cost differential on a per-gallon basis is just enormous. What a triumph of marketing!
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p>TedF
Honestly, I’d go as far as saying bottled water is probably one of the best marketing jobs in the history of marketing. Seriously, we pay a dollar or more for something we could get from our sink more or less for free!
…having taken the tours, I know Sam Adams and Harpoon breweries use filtered Boston water in their products. Since crap water would endanger their brand and cost them money, you can deduce that if it’s good enough for them, it’s probably good enough for us.
when we will assemble a cracker-jack team of BMG representatives to take a tour of this facility to, er, assess the quality of their products.
…runs tours Tuesday through Saturday afternoons and suggested donation is $2.00. It’s also close to several other bars including Doyles, which is a classic political bar at which anyone interested in Massachusetts and Boston politics should have a pint or a soda at least once. Overall, I’d give the place mixed reviews, but the ambiance is fantastic, it has a large tap beer selection and one of the largest scotch menus in the US.
Seeing as I prefer my water filtered through a brewery, and not some hoity-toity source du Jour, I will avoid Perrier and do my patriotic duty in sipping my Sam Adams.
…plenty of people pay a dollar a bottle to drink Dasani, which is usually Pennsylvania tap water in pretty bottles.
If you’re in PA, it’s PA tap water. If you’re in Texas, Dasani and Aquafina is Texas tap water. I’m not claiming it’s bottled in all 50 states, but dang close. After all, why pay to ship the water when you can let the atmosphere and the state governments do it for you?
Because the government is evil, and everything is better when delivered at higher costs by a large corporation.
http://atlanta.creativeloafing…
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p>The moral of the above story? If you’re going to drink bottled water, make sure it’s spring water and preferably from France, and the rest of the time, drink the tap water.
A portion of my house was built in the late 1600’s. Back then where I’m situated, settlers found a good water source and built there. My well today serves my family clean fresh water for the cost of plumbing, pump, maintenance, etc. It’s never run dry or been fouled. It is a blessing in this old farmhouse; of course there are all the crooked doors, leaking foundation, rotting timbers, leaky roof …….
As to water – I drink Fruit-2-O PLUS because I want the vitamin B overload (I need a lot of B vitamins to counteract deleterious effects of my regular medication – and, it’s tasty!).
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p>That said, my tap water is fine for drinking, and I do.
Rock on, Yarmouth.
All states test public water supplies but many don’t have testing programs for bottled water (I think Mass. does).
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p>We live in Boston and use filtered water for the taste, but you can’t taste the stuff that’s dangerous so taste and safety are really separate issues.
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p>If you’re worried about it I would definitely get your water tested for lead which, as others have mentioned, is a building or local pipe issue. Even lead levels well above the federal limits are really pretty safe. I used to work for the state’s childhood lead-poisoning prevention agency and the only child in their history whose main source of lead poisoning was water lived next to an abandoned smelter and drank well water.
One of the things that the Brita filters do is filter out most of the chlorine and most of the lead that’s in the water, and, unfortunately, Boston and Somerville water have quite a bit of lead in them, because the lead pipes are quite old.
I never buy bottled water except for trips and/or emergencies, but I frankly don’t trust bottled water, because it’s been known to have bacteria in it that’s no good for us. Also, who knows who the bottled water may have been handled by? I’ll stick with filtered tap water.
has far less crap in it than my tap water. I was doing Stanley Meyer experiments on how to run your car on water and I did find out the ugly brown residue that is typical suburban tap water. Just tonight I took a sip directly from the faucet and I had to spit it out. It was like the toxic reaction I get when tasting a diet softdrink only worse.
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p>40B has demanded the trend toward high density housing which has the added benefit of conditioning people to accept the prescribed lower lifesyles of shitty urban living even in traditionally suburban areas. The availability of water, enviornmental concerns, wetlands setbacks, local zoning ordinances be damned, the concept of higher density housing takes precendence.
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p>Locally, the Quabbin is some of the best water in the country. Not only are people being fools in difficult fiscal times spending money on Dasini and Poland Springs, but I’ve read various reports that strongly suggest that tap water is actually much better for people, because processed water processes out a lot of the good stuff, minerals your body needs.
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p>BTW – I can’t remember the exact figure, but there was an awesome Chronicle on tap versus bottled water a while back, where at one point they compared how expensive bottled water is versus tap water. I’m pretty sure one bottle of water from a machine costs about the same as over a 1,000 bottles of water, if you filled them up with the tap. The Chronicle website wasn’t very helpful, unfortunately.
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p>Lastly: if you’re worried about your building’s old pipes, there’s 2 things you can easily do about it.
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p>1. Leave your sink on for 10 seconds before you fill it up, all the sediments, etc. from the pipe will get cleared through if you do that. Everyone should do that.
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p>2. If you’re really paranoid about it, buy a Brita.
Leave your sink on for 10 seconds before you fill it up, all the sediments, etc. from the pipe will get cleared through if you do that.
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p>This is especially important first thing in the morning, as the water’s been sitting in the pipes overnight.
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p>If the first thing you do in the morning is take a shower, you’re all set. Ten seconds will do to clear the stretch of pipe in the sink.
Has to meet State and Federal standards. A Consumer Confidence Report (that report you get annually from your water supplier) only lists events that the water supplier has exceeded the Federal and/or State Drinking Water standards.
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p>What most of the posters here has said is true, the problem with most Tap water is from the pipes leading into and within the dwelling.
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p>You should never drink hot water from the tap however and you should probably run the water a few seconds before filling up your glass with cold water (just to be sure that anything in the pipes doesn’t get in your glass)
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p>You can find out more information about your drinking water from EPA’s Website:
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p>http://www.epa.gov/safewater/d…
is naive.
Another danger to the bottled-water trend is that the less people in a community depend on clean and safe tap water, the less the water department will be compelled to deliver clean and safe water.
Resist bottled water and insist on drinkable water from the tap!
There is a real concern relating to the safety of the water we drink. It’s obvious that no one wants to be to be drinking lead, and the bottled water industry has played off of this fear. The truth is that tap and bottle water are regulated by two different agencies, the EPA and the FDA respectively. Municipalities are responsible for tracking the state of their water systems, and are measured against very strict standards that are, thankfully, redundantly safe. The FDA, who commits less than one person to the task of overseeing the industry, regulates the majority of the bottled water industry. That’s right, the majority of the industry, not the entire industry. Due to the fact that the FDA is a federal agency, water that is produced and consumed within the borders of one state is not regulated. Frightening, right? So if you’re drinking some local bargain brand of bottled water, just remember that there are no regulations for the quality of this product. That’s not to say that big named bottled water is better. Nestle just had to recall a bunch of its water because it was contaminated with a food-grade cleaning agent. (http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080624/NEWS01/806240417/-1/SPORTS)
Although health concerns are important, as a society, we cannot ignore the environmental implications of the bottled water. Nestle, in particular, has a tendency to move its operations into small-town America, overpowering the local democratic process, in order to pump millions of gallons of groundwater into bottles. Removing all the groundwater is obviously a bad thing, but moving it away from the area of its origin is what is truly detrimental to environments, not to mention all the oil burned to make plastic bottles of which only about 20% a recycled.
If you’re worried about the safety of Boston’s water, don’t be, and if that doesn’t help, get a filtration system. $400 will buy any of you homeowners an industrial home filtration system (read: as good as the filters used by the industry). There’s also the age-old practice of distilling water by letting it sit for about 24 hours. This removes any of the funny taste or smell you water may have, factors that are unpleasant, but not unhealthy. Buy an open-topped pitcher and set it in the fridge, and the funny taste problem is solved. Stay away from bottled water. It doesn’t make sense, its expensive, its not safer than the water in your home, and it is so damaging to the environment.